Brett Austin, Natural Elixir – My Story

We all have a story to tell so let me begin by giving you an understanding of where my healing journey began and why… In 2010, when I was 33 years old, I was told by my doctor that I had about six weeks to live and that I should get my affairs in order. As, by this time, I had already died twice, I wasn’t afraid of death but I actually wanted to live and I was having fun on this beautiful earth. I was grossly overweight – 157kgs – I had lung cancer, from the 100-plus cigarettes a day, cirrhosis of the liver from excessive alcohol abuse and very bad kidney disease, I WAS A DJ and I ate all the wrong foods.

Brett Austin

The doctors tried to mask my issues with pain killers and medicine but all of that actually made me feel worse, so I took matters into my own hands. I went to the Internet and started researching the anatomy of the body and found out that for every symptom there was a plant to heal it, but not only that, I started learning subjects that intrigued my soul. Everything I was currently consuming – be it food or drinks – and national television were thrown out, the drugs came to a halt and the cigarettes were given up. Overnight I had let go of all the problem-causing substances that I was consuming and I went on a healing journey.

Eighteen weeks later I had lost 45kgs and I was seemingly feeling amazing. Sixteen weeks after that I had lost another 20kgs and felt even better. When I next saw my friends and family none of them recognised me and all thought I was now on my way out as I had lost so much weight, but in truth I was feeling amazing. Our bodies are amazing and very resilient and, with purpose and the will to live and a love for life, you can heal anything, but you also have to give up the things that are causing your illnesses in the first place. I found amazing natural healers along my path, took up meditation and healed my body. I even wrote a book about it called SELF IMPROVEMENT.

LET FASTING BE THY MEDICINE

THE VERY ACT OF EATING THE WRONG FOOD IS KILLING YOU.
We have all heard the saying “LET FOOD BE THY MEDICINE” but to understand this you have to know the basics of food and how your body reacts to it, but not only that, you have to understand that food and drinks, by their very nature, are killing you slowly. There are none who can escape the reality of life and how mass media and food corporations have banded together like the thugs that they are and have turned you into a food-consuming machine that will eventually need the help of their big brother ‘BIG PHARMA’. And all of this at your expense.
If you go back in time to when we were hunter gatherers, we were always hungry and it was not until we learned how to store food that humans became ill and obese. Using myself as an experiment again, I put it all the weight back on again and have lost another 45kgs just to prove a point. It took me a total of 36 weeks to lose the first 65kgs; it took me five years to put it all back on again, but this time round I did my weight loss over a longer period without dieting and it took me a year to lose the 45kgs just by fasting one meal a day and this time round I hope to help others achieve their goals by my example. Our bodies naturally want to be thin and slender with about five to eight per cent body fat and you can see this by looking at the human anatomy. It was in the late ‘60s that the food corporations cottoned onto the idea of breakfast and then paid all their doctors and scientists to  manipulate all of humanity via mass media into eating a third meal of the day – BREAKFAST – and they called it THE MOST IMPORTANT MEAL OF THE DAY! But ‘to whom’ is the question? Taking their profits up by another 33 per cent was great business for the industry but detrimental to US.
Breakfast stems from the word BREAK-FAST which is the period of time needed to fast the body once you have eaten your last meal of the day. Having three meals a day and snack in between, plus our many cups of tea, a soft drink and coffee with sugar in it, has caused chaos amongst all beings and we can’t seem to understand why people around us are dropping like flies, becoming ill, diabetic, suffering from inflammation, cancer and the all-too-many ailments to name.
The industry of food media and big pharma PROFIT OFF OF YOUR ILLNESSES and, only when you realise that you are their slaves by your actions, by what you eat and believe to be true, will you free yourself from disease and suffering.

FASTING TO SAVE YOUR LIFE
The big trend now is fasting. It is the new talk of the town for those of you in the know, but for the rest of humanity that cannot afford this magazine or don’t have access to alternative media, truth will always be what they see on their television and social media and that is very sad for all our brothers and sisters. The human race is one big family and we all stem from the same creator, yet some of the lost family members have woken up a little earlier and have manipulated the less informed into being their money ticket. Just think how eight billion lost souls are running around trying to get ahead in life while being bombarded with constant advertising on television and social media by actual doctors and well-placed sports stars or actors, who tell them that food three times a day is good for them. Yet they are all ill and dying a slow, painful death. Those who manipulated the masses will one day be given their fair share of Karma.

To heal your body, you have to fast from food as often as you can.

To heal your mind, you should fast from all social media and television.

To heal your soul, you should fast from everything you have been taught in your lifetime and go on a journey of self-discovery. It takes a brave soul to step out of the norm and take their life back but it will develop your mind and strengthen your being. Not only that, it will free you from your perceived prison of hopelessness.

The world right now is being run by absolute psychopaths who could not care less for any person on the street. Those same people are part of this family but they have been misled by their egos and dark magic, which gives them a false sense of hope to live an eternity of life as one of the masters. You can see them if you look into their souls. You can see their deceptions and you can feel their lies if you are aware of how it looks and how it makes you feel. Once you become self-aware, none shall pull the wool over your eyes, but you have to want to wake up and realise your part in this game. None of them have real power. They might have money and they might have status in this lifetime but they will return to life on planet earth and they will be made to pay for their sins. That is a promise from the universe: What you sow, so shall you reap.
It is a sad state of affairs to see the many humans suffering and being misled but they have to go through this in order to find themselves fully and, when you lead them to a new understanding of life and give them a choice, only then will they be able to choose. I spend a lot of my time coaching people and showing them that they, by their very actions, are choosing to suffer. They listen to their programmed doctors, who have also been misled by the psychopath leaders who wrote their medical books – teaching them about medicine and how to sell it, rather than teaching them about the body and how to heal it with food or fasting from it. The system is designed to take and take and take and the people suffering are those who did not take the time to research their ailments or to understand the biology of their own bodies.

CHANGE BEGINS WITH YOU
Nature is full of life, energy and resources; our earth has everything we need for both life and death and, by our very conscious or unconscious choices, we can have both. The best way to deal with chronic illness is to strengthen the resistance of the body so as to help the body’s immune system remove poisons and toxins, remembering that your whole body is your immune system.
All illnesses are the accumulation of improper thought patterns and unconscious eating and drinking and that is all there is to understanding the human body. So when you want change, the only person who needs to change is you!PERSEVERANCE IS 100 PER CENT SELF CONTROL
One thing that I myself had to learn on the natural healing process was the ability to be patient, think proper thoughts, how to flush the body and perseverance. After 36 hours of not eating food, your body is producing 500 times more growth hormones than it would if you were consuming foods, but not only that, by fasting the body it consumes as food all the weakest cells and damaged cells, thus allowing you to become stronger again. This is called autophagy. It takes 198 days for the body to replace all of its cells, so a little over six-and-a-half months. Our body has this ability to heal itself from the moment we decide we want to heal it. Modern medicine practitioners have not forgotten this understanding of the body; they just have not been taught it, so they have no real understanding of how everything is connected and the best place to start with one’s health is on your dinner plate.
Everything you consume will either aid you in your healing or it will exacerbate your suffering and – truth be told – your body knows the truth, it knows what you don’t like, yet we unconsciously treat it badly with our inability to listen to it. The body has to obey the mind, that’s is its function. The mind, however, is asleep and wrongly programmed by media and food corporations and our soul sits back and allows the chaos to unfold gracefully till you eventually hit rock bottom.

When you seek you shall find, ask and ye shall receive.
All of us have a breaking point when we decide enough is enough and then we go on the journey of self-healing. To best know yourself, take 20 minutes a day to be still, sit down, clear your mind and be still; be still with your body, be still with your ego, be still with your mind, be still with your spirit and be still with the universe.
Ask a question and the answer will be shown to you, seek your healing and it will come to you. The brand Natural Elixir was born from being still and the need for healing. When I was forced to be still, I was shown how Nature has a way of being both good for us and bad for us but allowing us to have the unconscious experience nonetheless.
We are all energy in motion. Nature is energy in motion, made up of nutrients, sunlight and the finest water and a frequency of life and healing – and when you understand this you will consciously make better decisions at each meal, you will consciously make better choices for your body and you will consciously become more and more aware of how your body is feeling, but most of all you will become more and more aware of the words you speak over your body and how it affects you.
All healing begins in the mind and your body will tell you what it needs if you listen to it, your spirit will guide you to Mother Earth’s NATURAL ELIXIRS and your ego will thank you, because a healthy mind, a healthy body and a healthy spirit give light to an amazing experience here on this beautiful planet while sailing through the universe.

Natural Elixir is a health and wellness-oriented collective based in Durban and founded by Brett Austin out of the necessity to preserve his life and those around him who were on the same path of destruction, their brand has gone from strength to strength over the past ten years as people have decided through their own research that natural plant medicines are the way forward for many who have not found healing in the main stream, Brett now coaches people all around the world who would like real change and healing for their mind body and soul, To connect with Brett you can email him on [email protected] or pop over to his vegan food van for a snack or a smoothie at the KwazuluSpirit Festival on 22 and 23 July. Find out more about Natural Elixir on his web page www.naturalelixir.co.za.

Journey through Coma and into Joy. By Sarah Bullen

I am shooting through the universe, a beam of light with no form and no goal. I had been in a coma for almost three weeks and had long since left that body lying on a bed in ICU in a hospital in Constantia. I only learned later that my mother had not left my bedside and that my family had begged and pleaded for me to come back. Friends had recorded my two young children talking to me and played it to me and my sisters had rubbed my feet and brushed my hair. What I didn’t know was what had been going on in the real world, the world where my body lay, breathing through tubes and machines.

I knew none of this. I only knew I had floated away from the hospital, then the city. Eventually I left the earth and moved far into the universe. Floating away.

I had no name. No attachments. No family. No form. No purpose. I was a floating, formless, light being. Totally at peace in the vast, beautiful peace.

In the real world I was dying. I was admitted into hospital with ‘the flu’ at age 34. Within 48 hours I was in an induced coma, on life support and fighting for my life. My big magazine job abandoned, my stylish house empty and my life suddenly vacated.

At the same time my husband, at just 41, was dying in another bed just 10kms down the road. He had been fighting brain cancer for four years. He had fought it with surgery and medicine and alternative medicine. He was deep along the path of becoming a sangoma.

“Write about it Sarah,” everyone said during those long, four, crazy, wild years as I entertained them with our ceremonies and rituals. I was an author and a journalist. I was a writer. But I couldn’t. I didn’t dare. I was caught in fear.  It was too private.
We were close to the end and he was about to lose his battle.  I wasn’t about to lose mine.I had spent decades trying to control my ability to astral travel and to ‘leave my body’. I had never wanted to do it, it had always terrified me, but it just happened. This time I was doing it in a spectacular fashion – in a coma.

I just didn’t know how to come back. It felt as if there were two threads pulling at me.One thread was my spirit and that wanted to float away and be free. The other was my soul and it wanted to be somewhere. It was being called back, down and back to my family and life.

Though the dark space after all those weeks I had a clear, distinct and real thought. It cut through like a beacon calling me.

I know that this was the turning point for me. I have read many NDE stories after waking up and I know that this was the moment I made a choice.

I had a conscious thought for the first time .It was the soul calling I finally heard.

Come home, it said. It was that thought that drove me for the next week until I finally woke up back in my body.

“Get home.”

At that stage I had been in a coma for so long I had a 10 per cent chance of survival. I was 20kgs lighter, being fed intravenously and kept sedated while a raging infection tore through my body. Getting back to my body was the first task and I was fighting for my life.

I have watched movies about people waking from a coma. They open their eyes and the fog clears.

It’s nothing like that. Waking up from a coma is not a singular event. It is a process of fighting your way out and into consciousness – and then slipping back under.

In the real world I was still in a deep coma, but the sedation was being slowly lifted. It was then that a spirit guide came and helped me back. I had met many beings in the weeks my soul had travelled, but this one stayed with me. He sat by my bed, calmed me down and talked me through the last few days until I woke. I thought he was a doctor at the time, until a few weeks later I remembered the bare feet, tiny stature, wizened hands and ancient eyes. I remembered what he had whispered in my ear when I asked him: “How am I to live again? What must I do?”

I was waking and slowly I became aware I was in a hospital. I knew there were machines and doctors. I was strapped to a bed, naked and cold.

Although I was somehow back near my body, I still had no idea I was in a coma. I was just a body in a hospital bed fighting for my life and moving in and out of my body.

What had happened to my body was severe. I had been in a coma for three weeks and had travelled worlds and realms. I had lost close to 20 kilograms. I was hooked up to a life support machine and a tracheotomy. I had compression machines moving the fluids out of my legs, and I was hooked up to feeding tubes and machines.

The ICU at night is a terrifying nightmare world. Not even Dean Koontz or Steven King could imagine the nights of terror. The nightmare is real and it is fuelled by the sedation and drugs flooding your system, creating nightmarish visions. I called this phase of coma ‘The World of Nightmares’.

Even writing this book, a decade later, I want to just stop. Turn away from the memories of the cold and the lights and the machine and the death. Turn away from being a nobody tied to a bed all alone, with people dying all around me.

Three days after I came out of the coma, my husband died. The wild shamanic journey was over.

“Sarah, you HAVE to write about it,” everyone said. I was an author, a journalist. I wrote about everything.  But I couldn’t write this.  I work with writers all over the world to tell their stories, but I couldn’t write this one.

I crawled forward sheltering two young children.  I had to learn to walk again, write again, talk again, think again and then get on with the job of being a mom. I had to get up each morning, make the lunch boxes and do the school lift. I lost all my hair. It took me years to reconnect all my neural pathways.
“Write about it,” everyone said. But I couldn’t. That year I wrote about my soul travels for a NDE journal. I did a few talks and interviews on it. I wrote shorter pieces for magazines.

All the time that message I had brought back with me from the spirit realms pulled me forward and confused me.

“Have more fun.” I didn’t want that to be ‘my message’. Shouldn’t it be more profound? Deep?

Fun was far away from me.  Both my children were filled with a deep fear of life itself. I was filled with fear. I was not afraid of death – I was afraid of everything.

My entire world had changed, but on the outside it all just looked the same. Same house, same car, same friends. It was then that I decided that fear was not where I wanted to live. I was going to choose love, joy and delight. I was not going to allow fear to live in my house.

I cultivated a practice of joy on so many levels.  I did the most improbable thing. I pulled both of my children out of school on a whim and we all moved to a small Greek island. Lesbos was the island of sex and tantra, of Lesbians and Osho and simplicity and life.

In the small, quiet, safe place I started to live into new story, one that was not rooted in fear, or old ideas of who I was or what my life should look like. It was one filled with joy, fun, delight and love.
My way, like so many other storytellers who have lived through the centuries, is to record and share my story. I entertained everyone with my stories of village life. I wrote a blog that got thousands of followers. I told this story many times in social gatherings, to friends and to strangers and on NDE shows and podcasts. I just wasn’t ready to write it. A decade later I was ready.
But we must tell them, because storytellers have a calling and that is to share more broadly than our circle.  I have come to believe that life offers us some opportunities that can form and shape us into better people. The bad news is, seldom are these the easy ones. Most often they are the hard ones, filled with pain and struggle.  I wish it weren’t that way, I wish we could just learn the deeper truths and it could all be easy. That that is not the call of the hero in fiction and not the real path in life.

       Over years of working on people’s books and stories, I have found that the struggle is truly the biggest gift and that truth can be stranger than fiction.

Sarah Bullen is a multi-published author, international writing coach and literary agent. Founder of The Writing Room and Kent Literary, she has had over 100 books published by writers she has mentored. As well as being a regular guest on talk shows, podcasts and writers’ circles, Sarah has been leading international writing retreats and adventures for the past decade. Her books include Hey Baby, The hip new mom’s guide that’s all about you! and Write your Book in 100 Days! Stop Mucking About and Just Write and  Love and Above – A Journey into Shamanism, Coma and Joy, which has just been published.

Sarah’s own story is inspirational. She was just 34 with a young family when her husband discovered he had a brain tumour. As he pursued a shamanic path to fight the cancer, they were both catapulted into a strange and magical world of ritual and ceremony. Alongside hospitals, surgery and treatments, fear and uncertainty came another wilder journey of spiritual searching. Then the impossible happened. As he entered his last weeks of life – Sarah ended up fighting for her own life, in a coma on life support. She was to remain in the coma for four weeks and travelled through near-death and into other realms and worlds. This journey is the story in her book Love and Above: A Journey through Shamanism, Coma and Joy. Sarah is a cancer survivor herself and a former journalist and magazine editor. Find Sarah at thewritingroom.co.za

 Love and Above – A Journey into Shamanism, Coma and Joy (Tafelberg) is available at all good bookstores.

“The book is quite extraordinary; an interesting mix of art and science.” Dr Stephanie Seneff.

This powerful book will will be launched at the Odyssey Spirit Festival in July.

Set against a brief biographical background of South African illustrator and Craniosacral therapist Ray Lacey, the book covers a number of thought-provoking subjects and poses some important questions.

Included in the mix is material on the differences between art and illustration, the need for the integration of two steams of consciousness – Aristotelianism and Platonism; the quest for the embodiment of the individual as central to the successful renewal of culture both globally and in South Africa.

Medical articles are presented on the causes of tuberculosis and other possible causes of HIV & AIDS; off target events and the need for the acknowledgement of scientific research on health issues – the critically important research and advice of science often being ignored. The book also features functions of the innate and adaptive immune systems, CD4 Th1 & Th2 cells, causes of autism, ADD ADHD, CranioSacral therapy, trauma recovery and primitive reflexes. All the material has been scientifically researched. Vitally important PMID articles are quoted and referenced.

Youtube: https://youtu.be/78aV2jEn-Ns

The book is available on Amazon in Kindle, hard and soft cover. 240 pages size 9‘’x 6’’.

A limited edition of 200 hard cover copies in a bigger size format (280 mm x 240 mm) 128 pages will be launched at the Odyssey Spirit Festival in July.

Copies will be available on order, at selected book shops and art galleries.

Ray Lacey graduated from the Durban University of Technology in Graphic Art (fine art) and from the Johannesburg University of Technology in Graphic Design. He lectured at the same faculty in illustration and then worked as a freelance illustrator for many years. In the late 1990’s he developed an interest in the interpretation of children’s drawings. This led him to study remedial therapy for children with learning difficulties within the Waldorf School movement. In 2001 he undertook a training with the South African Institute of Cranial Studies and qualified in 2003. He has produced a number of books; most successful is his illustrated children’s psychosocial support book for loss and bereavement from Tuberculosis “Jake and Tuffy” recently released on Amazon.